Advertising on Twitter has been something that’s been talked about a lot in online marketing circles. The microblogging service has now become part of many companies overall social media strategies. In fact, millions of businesses around the globe have created a Twitter accounts to promote their brand and share information with users who may be interested in what they have to offer. There are two ways a company can advertise on this social media site.

The first one is free and simply involves creating a Twitter account. You can then post messages on your profile, which can be read by users that follow you. But for those who want more exposure, Twitter has recently expanded its paid ads option, which allows your messages to be seen by Twitter users based on your selected demographic. Many companies, especially large and well known brands, have taken advantage of this paid advertising option.

But now, it seems that Twitter wants to increase the number of small and medium sizes businesses that advertise on its network. The company has made an announcement on November 20th that it is going to give away $100 in ad credits to small businesses that qualify. The conditions to receive the ad credit are quite simple: it requires a business based in the United States, which has a completed Twitter profile and image, sends tweets on a regular basis, hasn’t used Twitter’s paid advertising features before and has at least 20 users following them. The first 10 000 small business who sign up and fulfill these conditions are going to receive the advertising credit in their account and can begin using it right away.

Now, some may think that there isn’t anything spectacular or particularly generous about this offer. And this is actually quite true. Advertising credits have been given out by Google Adwords, Bing and Facebook through various channels. For example, it is common to receive $100 in Google Adwords credits and a $100 Facebook Ads voucher when signing up for a webhosting package. But it seems that Twitter has been a lot slower in rolling out its paid ad services and hasn’t been aggressively going after small business advertisers like Google.

But this seems to be changing and the company is now actively on the lookout for new advertisers, especially small businesses. And it also seems to be working. In fact, all statistics show that Twitter ad revenue has been steadily growing since 2010. This growth is expected to continue again in the next 2 years, with projected Twitter ad revenues reaching $808 million by 2014.

This recent promotion will give small businesses the chance to try out Twitter’s ad service without spending any money. This will give them a more “hands on” look at how Twitter advertising work and they can determine for themselves whether it is likely something that they will want to keep paying for in the future, or if other ad networks will give them better results for their online advertising campaigns.